p and display to set
up a native king. The prince selected was a certain Parthamaspates, a
member of the royal family of the Arsacidse, who had previously sided
with Rome against the reigning monarch. In a plain near Ctesiphon,
where he had had his tribunal erected, Trajan, after a speech wherein he
extolled the greatness of his own exploits, presented to the assembled
Romans and natives this youth as King of Parthia, and with his own hand
placed the diadem upon his brow.

Under cover of the popularity acquired by this act the aged Emperor now
commenced his retreat. The line of the Tigris was no doubt open to him,
and along this he might have marched in peace to Upper Mesopotamia or
Armenia; but either he preferred the direct route to Syria by way
of Hatra and Singara, or the insult offered to the Roman name by
the independent attitude which the people of the former place still
maintained induced him to diverge from the general line of his course,
and to enter the desert in order to chastise their presumption. Hatra
was a small town, but strongly fortified. The inhabitants at this time
belonged to that Arabian immigration which was always more and more
encroaching upon Mesopotamia. They were Parthian subjects, but appear
to have had their own native kings. On the approach of Trajan,
nothing daunted, they closed their gates, and prepared themselves for
resistance. Though he battered down a portion of the wall, they repulsed
all the attempts of his soldiers to enter through the breach, and when
he himself came near to reconnoitre, they drove him off with their
arrows. His troops suffered from the heat, from the want of provisions
and fodder, from the swarms of flies which disputed with them every
morsel of their food and every drop of their drink, and finally from
violent hail and thunderstorms. Trajan was forced to withdraw after a
time without effecting anything, and to own himself baffled and defeated
by the garrison of a petty fortress.

The year, A.D. 116, seems to have closed with this memorable failure.
In the following spring, Chosroes, learning the retreat of the Romans,
returned to Ctesiphqn, expelled Parthamaspates, who retired into Roman
territory, and re-established his authority in Susiana and Southern
Mesopotamia. The Romans, however, still held Assyria (Adiabene) and
Upper Mesopotamia, as well as Armenia, and had the strength of the
Empire been exerted to maintain these possessions, they might have
conti